Jeremy Clarkson, 65, issues worrying warning over future of British villages as he shares damning prediction
Jeremy Clarkson has issued a worrying warning over the future of quaint British villages as he shares his damning prediction ahead of the fifth season of his Amazon Prime series.
In the widely popular series, Clarkson gives viewers an insight into his biggest and most ambitious project to date – buying his pub The Farmer’s Dog.
However, the road to becoming the landlord of the now successful pub wasn’t exactly straightforward, as new faces, new livestock and new machinery arriving at the farm meant Diddly Squat was busier than ever.
Season 4 rounded off with the Diddly Squat gang toasting a tumultuous year, with its return a few months later to discover that life on the farm has become rather different.
Farm manager Kaleb Cooper embarked on a nationwide tour with a one-man show about farming, Lisa Hogan was away working on another new product line, and Clarkson had been left to run the farm by himself.
Of course, help was soon sorely needed, and the welcome arrival of a new farmhand not only got the farm ship shape in record time – it also gave Clarkson time to think.
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Ahead of the release, the star has opened up about the future of farming and British villages, noting that he doesn’t think they will stand the test of time with the current Government.
When asked if the Government could do more for pubs, he explained: “Of course there is, and there’s a lot of legislation that’s completely unnecessary, and taxes.
“But it’s the same for everybody in every business. Particularly in rural areas, the pub seems to have a more important role. The pub is the hub.
“If you have a village, and as we know there’s no village bobby anymore, there’s no village doctor, because he’s in a health centre 30 miles away and can’t get to see him anyway, there’s no village shop, as often as not, there’s no village vicar.
“You tend to find that they share three or four parishes. If you lose the village pub, what exactly is a village? It’s just a collection of houses.
“People massively overuse the word community these days, but there certainly isn’t a community if there’s no hub to it, and the pub is the hub.”
Over the past few months, the biggest issue with farming has been the Government’s changes to inheritance tax for farmers.
Touching on whether the new series will touch on the issues, Clarkson noted: “That will be covered in season five!
“When season four was filmed, Labour were still doing pensioners, they hadn’t got round to farming.”
Clarkson also touched on Cooper being away from the farm and what he had learnt during that time, adding: “I did do some of the farming for the first time ever, completely on my own, with Kaleb not being around.
“I had to take care of the pigs on my own. I had to take care of the cows on my own, and I had to get the crops planted on my own.
“It was the first time I was farming without an instructor, and we all know what that’s like.”